iOS 5 and iCloud – Day 1

I’ve had iOS 5 on my iPhone and iPad 2 for just about a day now. Along with this I’ve had two Macs on Lion 10.7.2 ready to see what iCloud is all about. I did have a couple issues with the iOS 5 upgrades and I still have an older iPad 1 that hasn’t been able to upgrade yet, But here are my first impressions about iOS 5.

I’ve had iOS 5 on my iPhone and iPad 2 for just about a day now. Along with these I’ve had two Macs on Lion 10.7.2 ready to see what iCloud is all about. I did have a couple issues with the iOS 5 upgrades and I still have an older iPad 1 that hasn’t been able to upgrade yet. I’m not overly anxious with that last iPad upgrade so I give it a try every few hours or so if I’m by my desk. But I’ve been completely unable to move my MobileMe account to iCloud, with the message in that earlier image being the end result when I run through the move wizard. If I actually needed MobileMe/iCloud I’d give up trying to do the move since this would probably be just the beginning of the problems.

Likes, Dislikes and Frustrations With iOS 5

By far my biggest like with iOS 5 is wireless syncing. I had read that the iPhone (or iPad) had to be plugged in to power which would be a hassle and the iPhone screen themselves imply this. Except the word “Automatically” is key. It requires power to sync automatically but can be synced manually anytime. I do have a dock for each on the night stand so do expect the morning sync to be slightly easier, saving a trip to the desk. I’ve found the wireless sync to be fast enough (I have 802.11N wireless). At this point there hasn’t been a backup done over wireless but I’m assuming it’s because the time for the next backup hasn’t rolled around yet as the last one was less than 24 hours ago.

One frustration was the re-organization of my app icons on the devices. Some of this may have been due to the Reminders and Newstand apps being added to the home screen, which was already full for me, I’ve read that others have had apps or folders removed completely but I didn’t experience any of that. (Or the app was used so infrequently that I didn’t notice). It was easy enough to fix, but still annoying.

Related to the moved icons I found that using iTunes to rearrange icons using the wireless connection was painfully slow and I gave up. As was scrolling through the app list to check and uncheck ones to install. I ended up doing this on the device itself, although connecting to USB would have been fine I’m sure.

I like the new notification drop down so I may actually turn notifications on for more apps. It’s taken from Android but it’s one of the features I missed from my Android days so I’ve no complaints.

It’s probably a frustration caused by iTunes and not iOS 5, but several of my smart playlists contain names of podcasts long deleted. They matched at the time but they don’t exist either on disk or in the podcast section. The main problem here is dead links in the playlists and sync errors since the files aren’t found. I had to delete the playlists.

On the other hand, one podcast related frustration was turned into a like with iOS 5. Previously the iPad did not sync playlists where the contents are podcasts. The playlists were there and the podcasts were there, but the playlists were empty.

One dislike is that the playlist display on the iPad shows album covers. In my case at least, the album covers provide little visual clue as the the playlist contents so I’d prefer the list names only, sorted alphabetically. I’ve yet to find a way to change this.

Frustration with iCloud and Apple Servers

Passed on Apple’s track record with “the cloud” I feared the worst. So I consider it a positive that they didn’t seem to break MobileMe.I don’t give Apple any slack for “unexpected demand” or launch bugs. This is the third cloud service I’ve used from Apple and all have had problems. I had no problem downloading the iOS 5 upgrade files themselves from Apple. It was only when the upgrade tried to communicate back to the mothership that I had problems. This is all before a couple million new iPhones hit the streets. It’ll be a long time before I trust Apple with any sort of cloud service. I’ll use it for convenience, but I’ll avoid having to rely on it always being there. Once they get this sorted out they’ll still have to prove they can do upgrades and enhancements without bringing the system down.

It may be a cute marketing ploy, but bringing down the Apple store every time there’s an update could be viewed as a inability to handle updating a live web service. Hopefully iCloud will prove this wrong, but it’s not looking good so far.

Wrapping Up

I’ve yet to be able to try iCloud and the trouble getting going doesn’t inspire confidence. So far my one liner is “lot’s of promise, little delivered”. No doubt iCloud will grow and get better I just hope it won’t be too painful. Anyone else using iCloud yet? What’s your favorite iOS feature?